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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22901503">In Beliefs &amp; Understandings</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dikhotomia/pseuds/Dikhotomia'>Dikhotomia</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>1000 Prompts Attempt 2: The (Slightly) Unorganized Mess [5]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Fate/Grand Order, Fate/stay night &amp; Related Fandoms</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Character Study, Gen, Not In Chronological Order, Snapshots, This is purely self indulgent trash</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-02-26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-02-26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 12:48:47</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,239</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22901503</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dikhotomia/pseuds/Dikhotomia</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>"Priest." </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>She opens her eyes to sun on her face and stone under her back, squinting up at the shadow of a person looming over her. "Yes?" She has to think for a minute about where she is, has to remember the King and the soldiers and the lively city as well as the demonic beasts and the Goddess out to kill them all. She puts it together as quickly as she realizes the servant sitting beside her, hands on her knees and sword sheathed at her side. Like she had been, Ushiwakamaru sleeps, eyes closed, expression slack. The samurai had been a constant companion throughout these singularities, always heeding her call when she reached into the proverbial ether for a hand, for a blade. </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>"The King has a new assignment for you."</i>
</p>
<p>OR</p>
<p>A Study In Snapshots</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>1000 Prompts Attempt 2: The (Slightly) Unorganized Mess [5]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1594495</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>17</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>In Beliefs &amp; Understandings</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Prompt 57 "God."</p>
<p>Like I said in the tags this is purely self indulgent, I binged Babylonia and then decided I wanted to mess with my OC and so here this is. I fully expect it to not make a whole lot of sense because it's just snapshots of periods of her life and a little glimpse into her character.</p>
<p>If you do end up reading/enjoying this I'm glad!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>"You have the means to help, so why don't you?"</em>
</p>
<p>It's like drowning and living her entire life through again in snapshots. Autum in the United States, leaves blowing in multicolored spirals across streets and through yards. Spring in Japan, breathing in the scent of cherry blossoms as they flutter about the air and stain the world in pink. Summer on the ocean, huddling in the cabin of a boat while a storm bears down overhead. Waves high and lighting splitting through the clouds. Winter in Russia, huddled in a heavy coat as she trudges through knee high snow and considers if freezing to death would be how she finally died.</p>
<p>
  <em>It's watching the world end in fire-</em>
</p>
<p>It's like taking the first breath after waking from a coma, full and startling, lungs expanding and muscles churning back to life after years of disuse. It's like coming back to life.</p>
<p>
  <em>A phoenix.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>A martyr.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>But she is neither.</em>
</p>
<p>"Priest." </p>
<p>She opens her eyes to sun on her face and stone under her back, squinting up at the shadow of a person looming over her. "Yes?" She has to think for a minute about where she is, has to remember the King and the soldiers and the lively city as well as the demonic beasts and the Goddess out to kill them all. She puts it together as quickly as she realizes the servant sitting beside her, hands on her knees and sword sheathed at her side. Like she had been, Ushiwakamaru sleeps, eyes closed, expression slack. The samurai had been a constant companion throughout these singularities, always heeding her call when she reached into the proverbial ether for a hand, for a blade. </p>
<p>"The King has a new assignment for you."</p>
<p>She stands, stone crunching underneath her boots as she pulls herself to full height again, ignoring the stiffness that had settled into her limbs.</p>
<p>
  <em>How long had she been laying here?</em>
</p>
<p>"Ushiwaka," she murmurs, looking down and not at all surprised to find her awake and moving already, rising up to her feet and ready for whatever order they're given.</p>
<p>-----</p>
<p>
  <em>"Do you believe in God?"</em>
</p>
<p>The question had come out of nowhere, startling her from her quiet observation of the woods to Jeanne beside her, the Ruler quietly contemplating the side of her face. "Forgive me if that was sudden, Althea, but I couldn't help but notice your cross." </p>
<p>Her hand lifts on instinct, brushing against the surface of the pendant hanging free over her shirt. "I believe in something," she replies, turning metal over between thumb and forefinger. "But not 'God' as you know him." She hadn't believed in God since she was ten, trapped in a closet and forced to listen to the slaughter of her family. She hadn't found faith again until she was a revenge driven fifteen, taken in by the church and trained to be an executor. </p>
<p>It hadn't lasted, the violence and the killing only making her realize she had become no better than the man who killed her parents. Revenge wouldn't soothe the wound their deaths had left, it would only serve to leave her more hollow.</p>
<p>She disappeared at twenty three, taking to wandering the world. Learning and helping instead of killing.</p>
<p>
  <em>But the blood on her hands remained.</em>
</p>
<p>"Whatever your deity," Jeanne says, bringing her back from the slow spiral into memory. "You will be forgiven when the time comes." She blinks, startled by Jeanne's words, by her smile and the gentle hand she lays against her bicep. </p>
<p>"Thank you," she replies. "I certainly hope you're right."</p>
<p>-------</p>
<p>There are more beasts on the path then usual, howling, scrambling, claws and fangs dripping with blood and poison. She meets them head on at Ushiwaka's side, fighting with the soldiers and her servant to protect the people they move from one place to another. Terrified citizens making a run for Uruk sooner then any of them had planned. She weaves between, blades alight with channeled fire and electricity, she's not as strong as Ushiwaka or Leonidas or Benkei, but she makes do. She wounds, distracts, leaves openings for death blows and keeps the soldiers from getting overwhelmed.</p>
<p>She trusts Ushiwaka as she always has. Trusts the other servants and the soldiers.</p>
<p>They make it back with few injuries and no deaths, civilians brought in and tucked away to be tended to. She hears Leonidas as he gives out orders to the guard change as she makes her way away from the wall, Ushiwaka at her back.</p>
<p>------</p>
<p>"I was wondering where you two ended up." A day later they find Mash and Ritsuka, both girls looking exhausted but as determined as ever. "I've been worried." When she wasn't drowning in work or strange dreams. She had wondered ever since she had landed without the other two and no means of contacting Chaldea. Ever since her and Ushiwaka had somehow managed to find their way to Uruk thanks to a few ranchers who pointed them in the right direction. "Luck," she had said to Ushiwaka as they were welcomed into the city, "maybe it has some weight after all."</p>
<p>She listens to the story they tell, of getting lost and being guided by someone they believed to be Enkidu, of the betrayal, of Merlin's rescue. She feels for them both, reaching out and resting her hands on their heads. "I'm glad you're both safe," she says once they've finished speaking. "After all, you two are the most important parts of this team."</p>
<p>
  <em>She didn't want to be remembered.</em>
</p>
<p>-------</p>
<p>She feels more like herself standing among the guards in the throne room, shoulders squared, hands folded behind her back and eyes down, studying the intricate patterns weaving through the tiles. Ushiwaka watches what she doesn't, eyes alight and ever alert. They listen like the others as Ritsuka struggles to get a word in edgewise against Gilgamesh's stubborn inset ways. It was the same, she thinks, when she arrived. But she didn't have the same desire to beat at that particular wall until he gave in.<br/>Instead she did just what was expected of her, help, fight, survive.</p>
<p>So she leaves it to someone whose more patient, someone who, by now, is used to negotiating. She can see Ritsuka's frustration, the curl of the girl's lips and the tense set of her shoulders. But she doesn't let it boil over, knowing when to bow out politely and leave.</p>
<p>Althea follows both her and Mash out, joining the few members of their little team this time. Siduri finds them all, much like she had the first time, smile warm. She settles them all elsewhere this time, in an abandoned building Mash and Ritsuka dub the 'Chaldea Embassy' after a few minutes of exchanged banter. They eat, they talk, they laugh.</p>
<p>She unwinds, if only slightly.</p>
<p>-------</p>
<p>She prefers Da Vinci's workshop out of anywhere else in Chaldea, likes the fact that it's as decorated and as busy as it is. There's a feeling of it being truly lived in versus the rest of the building with it's sterile white walls and pale expanse of snow and mountain outside. It's not that she minds staying inside, staying in one place.</p>
<p>
  <em>"A promise is a promise, right?"</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>"Right."</em>
</p>
<p>It's that between rayshifts she gets restless, gets the urge to disappear, to drift once again and see what's left of the world outside. If anything. She can't help but wonder if the reports that Chaldea was the only thing left was really true, or if it was some kind of mix up. She didn't believe any of them would lie...</p>
<p>So she escapes into the workshop when her nerves get the better of her, when the itch starts and she finds herself pacing the hallways absently at all hours, walking a never ending circuit. Sometimes Ushiwaka or another servant joins her on these long, repetitive walks and sometimes she's alone until the moment she finally sleeps.</p>
<p>It's better here, tangled up in a chair and staying out of the way as Da Vinci works, one of the artist's hundreds of books laying open across her lap. Sometimes Da Vinci will talk about what she's working on, about her life before she became a servant, each time Althea encourages these conversations with questions or comments and an attentive look. She watches Da Vinci work when she isn't reading and once or twice the artist has recruited her to help, handing her a tool and asking her to adjust something or hand her something else.</p>
<p>Althea obliges.</p>
<p>Da Vinci learns to read her.</p>
<p>
  <em>"You're always welcome here."</em>
</p>
<p>------</p>
<p>"You have steady hands, especially with all that nerve damage."</p>
<p>It's something she has to consciously think about when she works, muscles and bones and everything between taught how to work through the numbness of her skin. She looks down at her hands the same as Romani does, held gently in his larger ones, all the scarring exposed to the cooled air of the medical office.</p>
<p>They tremble.</p>
<p>"It's a matter of control," she replies, twitching her fingers and shifting her arms slowly, muscles winding and responding to her commands like anyone else's would. "I spent a couple years in and out of physical therapy, a few times I was told I was lucky I wasn't paralyzed..."</p>
<p>"You've adapted to survive," Romani fills in, turning her hands over in his and tracing the patterns of scars curiously. "You really can't feel anything otherwise?"</p>
<p>"Not at all," she says, watching his fingers, aware of what the sensation should be but feeling nothing instead. "Using my magic without a catalyst," she explains when he looks at her with a raised eyebrow, gripping her forearms and her biceps and her shoulders. "Something has to suffer the fallout of elemental channeling, and it's either my black keys or...well, my body." </p>
<p>Romani nods, cringing faintly as he continues his examination, finding scars and testing just where she reacts to touch and where she doesn't. It's easier, he finds, to find where she doesn't.</p>
<p>"How many times have you channeled an element without a catalyst?" He asks from behind her, pressing against her back. She jerks when he catches a patch of unblemished skin, teeth clicking together. She can hear him make a note on his tablet.</p>
<p>"Seven times, though I imagine there'll be more in the future." She remembers each time, remembers the pain and the determination needed to fight through it, body coming apart at the seams with each movement. She didn't need the magic to survive in a fight, all her training as an Executor making her a living weapon with or without her magic. But it gave her just that much more of an edge in an emergency, when she was out of catalysts and backed into a corner.</p>
<p>"Master-" </p>
<p>They both look, paused by the sight of Ushiwaka in the doorway, one hand lifted half up to her mouth. It's the first time she's seen her like this, without her coats and her gloves and her long sleeved shirts. It's the first time she's seen all the scars that litter her, every inch of arms and hands a lightning strike splash. The only outward sign of something being amiss was the fact she never reacted to touch and could deal with temperatures too high or too low for people with a sense for them without any issue.</p>
<p>And her hair, but that was just as easily played off as a dozen other things. The white streaks burned through the natural black just as easily from age as it was a style choice.</p>
<p>To her credit Ushiwaka swallows whatever it is she might have wanted to say, hands lowering back to her sides and eyes meeting Althea's. "When you're done here Da Vinci was looking for you. Both of you." She straightens, then bows, turning and leaving without another word.</p>
<p>Althea heaves a sigh. </p>
<p>She was in for it later.</p>
<p>------</p>
<p>
  <em>"Why didn't you tell me?"</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>"I didn't think it was important-"</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>"Master!"</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>There was no hiding from it.</em>
</p>
<p>------</p>
<p>Losing someone hurts. It tears away a part of you and leaves a ragged, sluggishly bleeding hole in the spot they used to be no matter how many times it happens. It's why she always tries to shut herself off. To keep herself at a distance and never quite become more than passing acquaintances. She didn't want friends, didn't want relationships. </p>
<p>The very idea of romance made her recoil.</p>
<p>But unconsciously her and Ushiwaka had become friends and Althea had let the walls down around her too much. So watching her charge forth to fight Gorgon with everything she had left with Althea's command seal bolstering her, left her feeling hollowed out. She can only watch, watch with the surviving soldiers. Watch with Ritsuka clutching her arm to keep her from doing something stupid, with Mash in front of them, shield on the ground and grip hard enough she can hear the leather of her gloves creaking.</p>
<p>
  <em>She'll be back.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>But never the same.</em>
</p>
<p>But her sacrifice isn't in vain and Uruk is left to pick up the pieces after a timely intervention that leaves all of them shaken and suspicious. They pick up the pieces, start to rebuild and Althea works to ignore the ache in her chest.</p>
<p>They continue on, as they always had.</p>
<p>Gods, she thinks, and Goddesses, were as cruel as they were kind.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>You can find me on <a href="https://twitter.com/modulatechaos">Twitter</a></p></blockquote></div></div>
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